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Sunday, 21 August 2016

You Are Where You Go

Picture
the scene. You inexplicably find yourself, after years
of working full-time and travelling, in a house all day in an area you barely
know with people around you who are virtual strangers and with an adorable, yet
regularly screaming, child you really don’t know what to do with. Sound
familiar? This was me 20 years ago. I was not alone. Regrettably I didn’t know
this at the time and when hormones are raging strongly and sleep is but a
distant memory, your self-esteem can take a real hammering even for a
comparatively confident person like myself.

Huggle
would have changed all this.
If I had been told all that time ago that there was a way of finding out where
people just like me go and where I could meet up with them, I would have bitten
their hand off.

I
thought I was organised.
Being the first of my friends and family to give birth in a long time, I knew
nothing about looking after an infant. I read books and magazines and prepared
myself thoroughly. What I hadn’t catered
for was how I would feel after the birth and what my life would actually be like.
I had already decided that I would be a stay-at-home mother. Great!
Getting up when I wanted and sauntering through the day at my own pace - it
would be like a holiday. (So naïve!) However, years of travelling and using my home as a veritable crash pad meant that I
knew absolutely no-one in my immediate neighbourhood. My nearest family was 50
miles away and all my friends worked full-time.
In short, I didn’t see anyone regularly for the first month I was at
home. I started hanging out in parks to
see who else may be in the same position. I felt lonely and isolated.

Although I
didn’t appreciate it at the time, I am not the only one to have had this
experience. One mother recently highlighted what I now know is a typical
feeling:-

“The hardest thing of all was accepting that
my friends and work colleagues were not accessible to me on a daily basis as
their lives hadn’t stopped for this big event, only mine had. So on top of all
this I now had to make friends all over again, when I was more desperate to
have communication with other mums but when I felt least like myself so I am
sure I came across as neurotic and desperate!”

Huggle
would have changed all that.
The social app works by tracking where you go and is deadly accurate. Even if it doesn’t get it exactly right, you
can change it to an alternate location from the list given. I tested this out
recently and discovered that it can even detect which platform you are on at
the train station - amazing! Going back to the younger me, having the app would
have meant that I could have checked which people were visiting the parks (and
anywhere else) I was going to in a quick and easy way without any of those
awkward fake conversation starters like:-

“Ooh, I have never seen such an adorable
baby”

(Not true - your baby is always the most gorgeous.)

Also:-

“How lovely - what’s his name?”

(About your daughter.)

And the
unforgettable:-

“Do you come here often?”

Instead,
Huggle would have immediately got me to the local meet-ups and drop-ins that
took me an age to uncover and wheedle my way into. (You don’t have to be
Sherlock Homes to be a first-time mother but it helps.)

Fast-forward
5 years on when I
moved into a new area, with 3 children under 5 years of age, and found myself
in almost exactly the same position. This time it wasn’t just the parks I was
looking longingly for people to relate to (whilst clambering up small trees to
rescue children caught on a branch) it was school playgrounds too.

Accessing the ‘Places in Common’ part of the app means that you can
easily identify parents similar to you. (It uses the premise that people who go
to similar places may have stuff in common which is a real step-up from
striking up a conversation with someone randomly.)

And
now? Accelerate ahead
another 15 years and I now find myself desperately trying to find a way of
helping my socially anxious teenager transition to university. Please, Huggle,
show me the way!